Thanks so much for reading my ridiculous thoughts! If you’d like to see my ridiculous thoughts translated into art, visit my website, or follow me on Facebook and Twitter. Know a caregiver, or someone with dementia, or someone who knows someone with dementia, or someone who knows someone who knows someone else who’s a caregiver? Or heck, do you know a person? Well, you should tell them about my book, Fractured Memories: Because Demented People Need Love, Too. Part memoir and part coffee table art book, I recount my family’s heartbreaking and hilarious journey through my father’s dementia. Available to purchase here (this is my favorite way if you live in the U.S.), here or here if you’d rather get the eBook than a print copy, and here (especially if you want a hard cover copy).

Spoiler Alert: The Tooth Fairy isn’t real. If you’re a small child or someone who somehow didn’t already know this, please stop reading. Also, go back to the first sentence and unread it.

With that out of the way, I would like to tell you how I know this. When I was a kid and lost my bazillionth tooth (I have a lot of teeth. I’m part shark, apparently), I put my tooth in the little pocket of the pillowcase my parents had given me for the nights the Tooth Fairy was supposed to visit. I rested my rosy little cheek upon my pillow and closed my eyes and drifted softly off to dreamland, imaging the piles and piles of candy I would be able to purchase with the quarter that would be left for me.

Not long after, I was awakened by the sound of a thundering herd of rhinoceri (didn’t you know that that was the plural of rhinoceros?!) charging down the hallway. Timidly, I crept to the door and peeked around the corner, only to discover that it was actually my dad, arms flapping daintily, flitting about merrily on tippy toe in front of the bathroom door to make my mom laugh while she was brushing her teeth. Didn’t he know that was a choking hazzard?! Way to go, Dad.

When confronted, he tried to claim that he was actually the Tooth Fairy’s representative for the southeastern United States. But I did a thorough check and he did not have a pair of wings, and that’s not even remotely practical. What, was he going to drive to every state within his district to hand out money?! As if.

Thus, he dashed all of my dreams, which also alerted me to the whole thing about Santa. I won’t spoiler alert you on that one – wouldn’t want to ruin it for anyone not in the know. All for a cheap laugh from his wife – doin’ marriage right. Parenting, though? Meh.

Thanks so much for reading my ridiculous thoughts! If you’d like to see my ridiculous thoughts translated into art, visit my website, or follow me on Facebook and Twitter. Know a caregiver, or someone with dementia, or someone who knows someone with dementia, or someone who knows someone who knows someone else who’s a caregiver? Or heck, do you know a person? Well, you should tell them about my book, Fractured Memories: Because Demented People Need Love, Too. Part memoir and part coffee table art book, I recount my family’s heartbreaking and hilarious journey through my father’s dementia. Available to purchase here (this is my favorite way if you live in the U.S.), here if you’d rather get the eBook than a print copy, and here (especially if you want a hard cover copy).

I know, I know, I know. I’ve been slacking on the whole blogging thing. But I’m almost ready to post live links for my book, and I’ve been elbow deep in research about how to promote the damn thing once it’s available. And being elbow deep in research is SO much less fun than being elbow deep in paint. Which is why I spent a fair bit of time today (while teaching classes and in between classes) playing with paint. I’ve created a line of paintings with text called Page’s Ponderings. Here is my first offering:

Hopefully, I’ll be able to get the series up on Etsy soon and post a link for purchase. Until then, you can get prints and other fun merch here and here.

Like this:

The other night, S climbed into bed and apparently wasn’t as high up toward the headboard as usual, so his feet were hanging off the bottom of the bed. Totally sincerely, he asked, “Am I getting longer?”

So, that blood blister I mentioned a few posts back? Well, now that it’s not so angry looking, I kind of like it. It’s like a beauty mark for my ring finger. And it makes an excellent nose for finger faces:

As you may have noticed, I am a silly person. Some people might prefer to call me ridiculous, obnoxious, or “special,” but I go with silly. Luckily, there are other silly people in the world, too, so my odds of getting locked up again are lessened somewhat. Friday afternoon I played hooky from work and had lunch with a new friend, Audrey, who, I am discovering, is rather silly herself. First of all, you have to love her because she has the hiccups ALL THE TIME. Like, ALL the time. Every day. And they’re the most adorable hiccups you’ll ever hear. They’re kind of like chipmunk sneezes (okay, so I don’t know what chipmunks sound like when they sneeze, but I bet it’s high pitched and cuteasabutton). Or maybe unicorn giggles. They’re definitely rainbow colored. Anyway, Audrey and I had lunch and then went out to explore and take photos. She’s actually become a really great photographer. I am not a great photographer, but I like to take photos as inspiration for paintings, so I was happy to have someone to go scouting with.

We started by wandering around a plaza that has funky little shops and restaurants, and spent waaaaaay too much time in one store moving the little army men that were placed here and there – or hither and yon if you prefer – to other places:

I believe I can flyyyyyyyy, I believe I can touch the skyyyyy…

We also were very intrigued and slightly terrified by these wearable candles:

Firstly, they smelled delicious. I totally wanted to make out with them. But we were concerned about wearing candle goop. I mean, if we spread this stuff on us, will that make us more flammable? That could be a problem since I’m so damn hot already.

Another item we found rather astounding was a light bulb. When you turned it off, it was supposed to look like a football, but if you didn’t see the side with the “stitching” on it, it looked like a little turd. And when you screwed into a base and turned it on, voila! It looked raaawwwwther like a penis light:

Regardless, we had more fun than we probably should have in these stores, and thought it might be a good idea to take our chortles elsewhere. So we went out to a park to explore. Took some lovely shots of flora then strolled past a pond and stopped to ooh and aah at the majesty of nature. Just then, something fell from a tree into the pond and made a “bloop” sound. I snickered under my breath. Then another one came down and I heard Audrey giggle. Then a whole cascade of them came down and we just stood there laughing helplessly. We’re mature like that. And silly like that. And it was wonderful. I wish we could have recorded it for you so that, when you’re in a conference meeting and you’re bored out of your mind, you could play the “bloop…bloop bloop bloop…bloop bloop…” sound to give yourself a little giggletickle. Or if you’re in a fight and someone is telling you how much you suck, you could just hit play and drown them out with bloopage. I’m sorry we failed you. But I will leave you with something that may provide comfort. We discovered that there is such a thing as bourbon cheese:

I’m singing myself happy today. Just in case you, too, didn’t also wake up automatically happy on this International Day of Happiness , I’m going to help you out a little bit.

First, during class last night, I said, “Okay, we’re going to put some green under here,” and one of the painters yelled out, “Under where?” My brain immediately turned it to “underwear” and I giggled. Let’s face it, I’m really still about 7 years old.

Second, there is nothing in the world that makes me happier than making my dad laugh. Here’s one of my favorite ways to do it:

Like this:

Okay, attempt #2 at a passable blog post. Get it? Number 2? Damnit, I’m already back to fecal humor (see my first post)! Oh dear. Moving on. This is SO not what Steve had in mind when he made me start a blog, is it?

I guess I should tell you a little bit about my life so you know who the hell you’re dealing with here. That is, if you haven’t already figured that one out from my first post: I am a grade-A, pure chuck silliness junkie. Who is very upscale and posh. Okay, maybe that last part is a lie, and I promised not to lie in my first blog. I suppose, like everyone, I have a public persona and a private persona, but since I am trying to lead a more authentic life, I’ve decided to try to marry the two in this blog. Which is reason #34 that I was hesitant to start a blog. I suspect I may swing wildly between maturity and insanity in this thing, which is pretty much how I am in real life and is the reason my poor husband never knows what’s coming. Clearly, we have not hit upon the maturity part yet. I know that part of marketing art is marketing the artist herself, which means that anyone trying to market me has their hands full, which really means that I have my hands full. Can you believe that we’ve gotten this far into the paragraph and you haven’t learned anything substantial about my real life? Really, it’s appalling. You should write to your congressman about it (not that they’ll do anything about it, they’re too busy fundraising for their next campaign).

By the way, remember how I said my low back starts killing me if I sit too long at the computer? Well, I stood up to stretch and had my leg on a chair behind me and my arms over my head and may have been making ugly faces, and a man walked by my store window with his dry cleaning and looked at me like I was an idiot. Which is probably true, but really, I was just stretching. I was being sensible. Quit judging, bucko.

I promise that I really am going to tell you about myself now. I just got distracted. It happens. I said quit judging! I’m the product of two dirty hippies who liked to travel around the country camping near train tracks (my dad was a major train buff), which meant that I needed to find ways to entertain myself. Enter art supplies (and making up songs that no one would ever want to hear). While my parents learned early on that crayons equal a melted mess in the back of the van if you’re camping anywhere warm, I was allowed all manner of other media to explore with. As years passed and we stopped travelling as much, my parents still encouraged me to pursue art in any way that interested me. Gotta love those dirty hippies. Eventually, I went to Wake Forest University and obtained a bachelor’s degree in visual arts. Mind you, I was not planning on becoming a fine arts major. I was going to be WAY more practical. But the night before I had to declare my major, I literally played eeny meeny miney moe with 3 equally impractical fields of study, and landed on art, so here we are. I moved to DC for one miserable year, then to FL (more on how I went from DC to FL in another post) where I began selling my artwork in local galleries (and where I met my husband, who shall henceforth be known as “S,” because his name is way too long to type on a regular basis and I’m lazy like that). As the economy tanked in the mid 2000’s, I found my art sales drying up, so I had to get a “real” job. I landed at a law firm as first a receptionist and then a paralegal helping people get their disability benefits, and while I enjoyed the work, I had a pretty awful boss. One day, out of desperation resulting from a particularly hideous work day, I went onto craigslist to look for another job. I stumbled across a sip and paint studio that was opening up a franchise and applied and got the job. It wasn’t enough work to allow me to quit the law firm, but it was a fun outlet and a little extra income. I’ve taught most of my life, beginning with horseback riding, then acting, and of course, art, so teaching at the sip and paint studio came very naturally to me. Plus, there was wine. Dream job, right?

Then my dad was diagnosed with dementia at age 65. Don’t worry, we’ll talk about that a lot more in future posts. There is no end to the pain and entertainment it brings to my life. So the hubs and I moved to VA to live with my parents and help my mom care for my dad. After about a year, it was too hard to keep my dad safe (again, more on that another time), so we placed him in a dementia care facility and moved to NC to start our lives again. We opened a sip and paint studio and now I spend my days answering calls and emails and teaching drunk people how to paint (okay, so they’re not all drunk, but it’s still fun to say) and wishing I had more time to actually paint for real. Foh rillz, ya’ll.* Really, I should be painting right now. I blame Steve. But I suppose if I don’t start marketing the art again, I won’t sell it, which means I’ll continue paying for a damn storage unit and feeling bad about making more art to store. Steve 1, Emily 0.

*So last night I said to S, “Y’allsuns better move out of my way.” He claimed that “ya’llsuns” is not a word that anyone has ever said. Is he right? Did I make that one up?